I love London. The bustling streets, where swarms of individuals move as if they were one great fluid, the endless hidden corners just when I think I’ve seen it all, the old and new squabbling for space. After a great summer I now can’t wait to return to my beloved Sheffield, but the atmosphere of the capital is something I do miss when I return to uni.
I went to the V&A museum a couple of weeks ago (shamefully, for the first time ever, after intentions to visit have failed for the last decade!). I had the company of my lovely mum, ever the one to imagine the stories behind what we see, who got me thinking about the concept of awe. We looked at grand, towering religious relics and wondered about the inspiration behind them; the reverence motivating the designers of such things to honour their gods.
^Mum looking intellectual in the V&A
It’s debateable how much people still experience and value this sense of reverence. In our busy lives, where we like to think nothing is beyond us, we rarely stop to say “wow”; to watch, to meditate, to marvel. The word “awesome” is batted around incessantly, but do we really experience awe? Dictionary.com defines awe as “an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc.” caused by experiencing something “grand, sublime or extremely powerful”. This is a big word! Its enormity is, I think, often a little underappreciated. Describing my new phone, my breakfast or a particularly nice pen as “awesome” seems to somewhat discredit those things that are truly awe-inspiring (guilty as charged).
Awe needn’t be reduced to a meaningless word, or relegated to a religious grandeur seen only in the past. Awe can and should be found in the everyday. Back to London for a minute- another more recent trip saw my boyfriend and I hop on the London eye (thanks to a very kind friend with free tickets!). The sun had set on a miserable rainy day and the gloomy, grey Southbank had transformed into a sea of lights against a big black sky. It was beautiful, and the eye was a moment to stop and appreciate that unintentional, industrial elegance. Apparently my face completely failed to hide the childlike awe I felt the entire way around…. No shame!
^I thought this was a decent view
Awe might not be the “coolest” emotion out there. Kids at school are scared to appear too “keen” for anything; ambivalence is safest, so it reigns supreme. In fact, you might be laughing at me right now for my excessively rosy descriptions of light-polluted suburbia… But awe is such a necessary and brilliant experience. Whatever it might be that makes you stop and think “wow”, embrace it! It reminds us of our humanity and helps us to appreciate the majesty of the world we live in.
This was going to be a couple of lines to introduce a pretty ropey poem but seems to have escalated… I’ll leave you with the lines anyways- I hope you find something to marvel at today :)
These days “everything is awesome”
Yet we’re starved of awe.
We’re fuelling a distortion
That there isn’t something more
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But there’s mighty power in rolling seas
That crash against the sand
There’s galaxies light-years away
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There’s cities, brought alive at dusk,
that sparkle with a million lights,
And behind each glowing window
is a heart, a soul, a life.
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There’s evening skies ablaze
with colours sent from a distant star,
There’s a God who made the mountains
but knows exactly who you are.
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Don’t leave wonder as a dying art,
lose reverence to history,
Stop and stare, and stand amazed,
And marvel at the mystery.
